


Fox; Hound

by ArtemisTheHuntress



Series: Daemon Soldiers [1]
Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Backstory, Daemons, Gen, HEADCANONS TIME, M/M, Solid Snake's FOXHOUND Days, The Snake/Fox isn't a major focus of the fic but it's definitely there, Xmas Supply Drop 2017
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-20 05:50:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,181
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13140387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisTheHuntress/pseuds/ArtemisTheHuntress
Summary: Prompt: "Dæmon AU but everything else is still the same. All the war crime but with a sprinkling of animals. Deconstruct or mess around with this as much as you want."Solid Snake's days in FOXHOUND, before everything came crashing down (and a little bit afterward), except this time everyone has daemons.  War crime is still war crime, unethical shadow government transactions are still unethical, and trauma is still trauma, and FOXHOUND still isn't really a good place for anyone.





	1. In the Beginning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [piccadilly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/piccadilly/gifts).



> For Picadilly; I saw this prompt on the list and immediately went "THAT'S MINE." I love Daemon AUs and hope this is what you wanted.

**New Jersey, 1972**

EVA drummed her fingers on the metal table. She didn’t like to sit still. She didn’t like to be confined. The room was pleasant-looking enough, pastel walls with banal overly-idyllic framed prints. There were cows on rolling hills, sunny skies, young children and their small birds or kittens or puppies in scenes of idealized white American childhood. It was obviously supposed to put those visiting the clinic at ease, but for EVA they just added to the claustrophobia.

Noticing her discomfort, Blair spread his blue-gray wings and glided from his perch at the top of the tall beam scale to the table beside her. His yellow eyes pierced into hers.

“You volunteered for this, you know,” he said.

She brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen in her face. “We’re not having this argument again.”

“Of course not. It’s five months too late for that.” He ruffled his feathers. “But if you can put up with everything else that being pregnant brings, you can put up with this once a month.”

“That doesn’t mean I have to like it,” EVA said, but even she heard how sulky she sounded and sighed. “But after this, I’m taking the bike out on 202 and opening up the throttle and I’m going to blaze down the highway until I can feel the wind in my blood again.” She smiled now. She was good at acting brave. “Think you can keep up?”

He puffed out his chest feathers. “I haven’t fallen behind yet.”

Blair was a peregrine falcon. When he’d settled, it hadn’t surprised EVA in the least.

“Well,” said another voice as the adjoining door opened, “you will most certainly _not_ be doing that, but I have to admire your spirit.”

EVA and Blair turned at the same time to watch Dr. Clark walk in. She looked tired but pleased, holding a clipboard nearly bursting with papers. Her daemon, a skinny black cat, followed at her heels.

“Of course, doctor,” EVA said, in an easy tone that clearly indicated she had no intention of complying.

“I mean it, Dolores,” Dr. Clark said. “That motorcycle you rode in on is a two-wheeled death trap. Even if you don’t care about your own life, right now you’re the most valuable person in the world and we can’t afford to risk you in any way.”  


Dolores. It wasn’t her name, of course, and both women knew that, but it was her cover identity for the duration of the _Les Enfants Terribles_ project and they both had to pretend to believe it, if nothing else.

“Motorcycles aren’t dangerous,” EVA said. “The people who think they are just have daemons who can’t keep up.”

The cat at Dr. Clark’s feet shivered slightly and EVA felt a small twinge of satisfaction. It was fleeting, though. Her worries were too strong in her mind.

“Even if you think so,” Dr. Clark was saying, “at this stage in the second trimester I’m going to have to insist you stop riding, for the babies’ sakes. We can’t risk – “

“No.” On this, she wasn’t going to budge.

“The government will provide you with a car, I just need to put in a call – “

“I’d die first.”

Their eyes met. Dr. Clark believed her.

She sighed, a little bit resigned, a little bit frustrated. “I can’t say I didn’t expect as much. And, well, I can’t stop you. But… be careful. You’re carrying precious cargo.”

EVA knew that better than anyone. She didn’t have to be told. “I’m careful.” Not true, exactly. “I’ve never crashed, never gotten hurt,” she amended. That much was true.

Dr. Clark gave a soft snort of disbelief. _”Never?”_

Oh, right. She knew. She was sort of there. “Only once,” EVA said. “And there were extenuating circumstances. I don’t expect to tangle with the GRU again in the next four months.”

“I don’t believe _that_ , either, but, again, I can’t stop you. Just keep yourself safe and out of trouble.” Dr. Clark flipped through the paperwork on the clipboard. “Other than that, you’re perfectly healthy. Weight normal. Blood work normal. No developmental problems – we were a little bit worried about the second fetus last time but it appears to have completely smoothed out and stayed on track. Which is good. By everything I can see, you’re the very picture of a healthy expectant mother of twins.”

Almost without thinking, EVA’s hand drifted to touch her swelling belly. Blair flapped his wings and nuzzled his head against her arm. 

Sometimes, this – being pregnant, carrying these children, these glorified science experiments, the Manhattan Project of babies – felt like the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes, when she leaned forward on her bike with the roar of the wind in her hair and the shadow of Blair’s wings crossing her face, she could almost forget that she wasn’t just Dolores, could almost imagine a future taking her sons on adventures and Blair teaching their daemons to fly.

But sometimes, when Dr. Clark tapped her clipboard and tried to reassure her that this was normal, everything was normal, she was healthy and the tiny lives growing inside of her like festering alien parasites were healthy, she felt like this had all been an awful mistake. Like she was complicit in creating something wrong and strange, that nobody understood, not really. These children wouldn’t have adventures. Their daemons wouldn’t be birds. They were weapons of war, property of the government, and – would they even know it? Would they even be _people?_

“And they will be normal children?” EVA asked.

“What?” Dr. Clark frowned, confused. “I mean, besides the alterations we made to their genetic code in the lab to shorten their telomeres and make sure they’ll be sterile, but those won’t come up until much later, and they won’t affect their development as – ”

“I mean,” EVA said, “will they be real people? You made them in a lab, in a test tube, with electricity and – scientific tools.” Dr. Clark had explained the process multiple times, but EVA had never tried very hard to follow it. “Will they grow up normal?” Pause. “What if they don’t have daemons?”

There it was. The concern she hadn’t even voiced to Blair, but – how artificial did a human have to be before they weren’t human anymore? Was _clone_ enough? Would her children (and they _were_ hers, they were hers just as much as they were his, maybe more – _she_ was the one carrying them and did he even know they existed? These were her kids, damn it) – would her children have anything even like a future?

Dr. Clark stared at her for a moment, caught in surprise; even her daemon sat up straight and stared, too. Then Dr. Clark laughed, not in a mean way, but as if in relief that EVA’s concern could be easily addressed. “Of course they’ll have daemons,” she said. “Why wouldn’t they?”

“They’re not normal babies. They’re clones. You don’t know.”

“The only thing that’s strange about them is how the zygotes were fertilized,” Dr. Clark said, and her cat daemon lay down, waving his tail lazily, losing interest. “Right now, there’s no difference between them and any other fetus, and when they’re born, there will be no difference between them and any other baby. And daemons materialize a few hours after birth. They won’t even _know_ they’re different from the other kids.”

EVA scowled slightly. She hated this, hated the way how doctors explained the answers to legitimate questions the same way they stated facts that everyone knew. Of _course_ she knew daemons materialized after birth. That _wasn’t the question._

“How do you know that creating them that way didn’t bypass something fundamental?” EVA asked. “Can you be sure?”

“There’s no mechanical difference between creating a baby by ordinary biological means and creating one by IVF,” Dr. Clark said. “The processes at work are the same.”

“IVF?”

“In-vitro fertilization. Fertilizing a zygote and then implanting it in the mother. It’s still secret and highly experimental, but of course we tried it out first before using it in the LIT project. All the IVF babies that carried to term were born without unusual fuss and their daemons materialized in normal time ranges. The oldest IVF child turned one a few months ago and is developing normally. You have nothing to worry about. Trust me, if the Pentagon thought the sons of Big Boss would be born without daemons, the project would have been scrapped a long time ago.”

EVA was silent, and stroked Blair’s feathers. Then, she asked, “Dr. Clark, did you get to see _The Resurrection of Zachary Wheeler_?”

Dr. Clark’s face lit up. She smiled, and it was the first real smile EVA had seen from her, rather than the fakely-reassuring doctor-smile. “I did! It wasn’t very _accurate_ , and they never actually used the word cloning, but it was an intriguing take on the bioethics of what was, well, cloning. The ending was lackluster but it was worth seeing.” Realizing why EVA had asked, she hastened to add, “Real cloning won’t be like that. The LIT children will be ordinary children, not cone-headed organ harvesting tools. I promise.”

“Can you? The clone bodies in the movie didn’t have daemons. That was an important plot point. They were alive, but they were lifeless, and cold, and acted like they’d been _severed_. They hadn’t, though. They’d just never had daemons in the first place.”

“ _Zachary Wheeler_ is a sci-fi movie,” Dr. Clark said. “I liked it, but the people who made it obviously don’t know about the work we’re doing, or the care we’ve put into this project. Frankenstein’s monster didn’t have a daemon either, but you’re not going to take _Frankenstein_ as scientific evidence, right? You’re healthy, and the children you’re carrying are healthy, and everything is progressing normally. I promise, the sons of Big Boss will be fine.”


	2. Induction

**Montana, 1992**

Helene trotted at David’s heels as he trudged through the morning frost. “So,” she said, finally, “are we _sure_ that FOXHOUND is a real thing, and not just a prank? Because it feels very much like a prank.”

“Mhm.” David was ignoring her.

“Probably from Callahan. He never liked us and would think it’d be absolutely hilarious to say we’d been recruited by the super secret elite unit that no one’s sure if it even exists – “

“It exists,” David said.

She knocked her muzzle gently against his thigh. “You’re too trusting.”

He looked down at her. She wagged her tail innocently.

“The Colonel wouldn’t be in on any bullshit from Callahan, would he?” David said, turning back to squint down the road, into the sunrise. “And he’s the one who said I’d been requested.” He paused. “And all those exams last month. The physical and the psychological and language tests. Those weren’t routine, those were different. They must have been selection tests.”

It was Helene’s turn to make a noncommittal growl. “This place looks like the most boring underfunded army base imaginable.”

“No shit. It’s secret, probably.”

“You’re going to go up to someone and ask for Big Boss and they’re going to laugh at you.” She didn’t wait for David to answer before growing bored with the conversation, and darted ahead to the much more interesting task of sniffing a scraggly bush growing beside the drab brick building up the street.

From several yards away, she may have been just an ordinary scruffy stray dog. She had noble lines – powerfully built, with a narrow muzzle, pricked ears, soft fur, fluffy curled tail – and if she _had_ been a true dog, David would have guessed half wolf, half Alaskan Malamute. But she wasn’t a true dog, of course, and such speculation was really only useful for gossip and newspaper daemoscope columns, neither of which David had any remote interest in. On his driver’s license, she was listed as _Daemon: wolfdog_ , and beyond that didn’t much matter. She was Helene. She was his life’s partner, his other half, an external manifestation of his own soul, and she was, at the moment, being a pest.

Turning his attention away from her, David scanned the streets. There were few people milling about, some looking intent and some looking like they were just killing time. They gave him blandly curious glances as he walked past – while expansive in area, the personnel numbers on this base seemed low. Everyone must recognize everyone else by sight, and anyone new stuck out.

The collection of people didn’t appear any different from anyone he’d seen on any other army base, though. If this was the fabled FOXHOUND, it was remarkably underwhelming.

He was looking for a central office building to report to when Helene started barking, sounding excited, and punctuated with her shouts of “Mr. Miller! Is that Mr. _Miller?_ ”

David spun around, and once she knew she had his attention, she went from outright barking to soft _whuf_ ing – more restrained, but still excited and suspicious and confused, all at once. He followed her gaze and – it took him a moment to place the man she was staring at, but there weren’t many middle-aged men out there with permed blonde hair, aviators, a prosthetic arm, and a fluffy but tough red fox daemon. That... sure was Mr. Miller. David had only ever met him once before, and though it had been such a strange meeting, he wouldn’t have ever expected to see him _here._

The feeling was apparently mutual. Miller was staring, and his daemon’s fur was fluffed out in defensiveness and startlement.

Figuring that Miller was as good a person to talk to as any here, David walked over to him. Helene bounded along, eager to greet his daemon – Mimi, had it been? Yeah, Mimi.

“Mr. Miller?” David said, as he approached.

Miller nodded, and leaned on his crutch. “David, right? Fancy seeing you here.”

“I could say the same for you,” David said. “I wasn’t expecting this. You’re with FOXHOUND?”

“As far as I’m aware. I take it you’re one of the new recruits?”

“That’s what I was told.”

Miller shook his head. “Yeah, I’ll bet you were. They couldn’t wait to get you, huh.”

David hadn’t expected a reunion at all, but now faced with one, this wasn’t the one he expected. “If FOXHOUND is the elite unit that people say it is, I’m honored,” he said.

“Yeah,” Miller sighed, “yeah, it is an honor to be selected.” His daemon was clearly uneasy, but whether that was Helene towering over her, trying to sniff her in greeting, or something else, David couldn’t tell. “Come on, then,” Miller said, “I’ll show you where you fill out the paperwork before induction.”

 

* * *

A few hours later, David stood on the floor of a large, cleared vehicle hangar, the thrill in the air making the place seem almost grandiose despite the dingy functionality it must usually have. He and a dozen other new recruits formed a neat line in the center of the floor, each of their daemons either sitting neatly beside their respective humans, or perched on their shoulders. The soldiers stood at attention, but a few of them (himself included) shot darting looks at the others in line. A collection from various branches of the armed forces – two Marines, two Navy, four Army, three Air Force, a Coast Guard even, and two not in uniforms he could place – with daemons of various animals, mostly dogs (unsurprising) but a crow, a lizard, and a coyote he could see, too. He noted, with some pride, that he was easily the youngest in the small group. (It didn’t occur to him until much, much later that he was _too_ young to wonder why.) A larger group – what must have been the rest of the FOXHOUND unit? David saw Miller among them, looking sullen – crowded around the edges of the large room, or looked down from perches high on catwalks.

Big Boss paced on a partly-raised observation platform ahead of them. His daemon, an anaconda as thick as his muscled arms and twenty feet long, draped loosely-coiled around his neck and across his shoulders. He didn’t seem to notice the recruits, or the room, or anything surrounding him. The gaze in his one good eye was distant.

Then, on some cue no one else could determine, his daemon lifted her head and said something into his ear. He nodded, and abruptly stopped walking, turning to face the room full of people before him. His look was sharp now, sharp and serious, and the low level of murmurs in the room ceased.

“Soldiers,” Big Boss said. His voice, even projected like this, sounded like gravel. “New recruits and old comrades. What you have chosen to do today is not easy. But in the modern world, of modern war, it is the most important thing you can do.

“You have been selected to join FOXHOUND. Before today, you may or may not have been aware of its existence. This is an elite, and top secret, special forces unit that you would not have even been informed of if you had not been deemed fit and ready. You have been chosen based on your skills, your abilities, your exceptional performance in extreme situations of crisis or battle. Some of you were heroes on the front line; some of you made names for yourselves in medicine or infiltration or espionage. This will no longer be your life. There are no heroes in FOXHOUND, no glory, no fame. What you do, you do for your country, and for the world.”

He was getting animated now, pacing again, but his piercing eye never left the rigid line of soldiers in front of them. He was like a snake, hypnotizing; even if they hadn’t been consummate soldiers to the last, that gaze alone could have transfixed them, pinning them in place. As he talked, his age seemed to recede. He was a force of nature, a being of inexplicable charisma.

“The battles you will now face are part of a larger war, an endless and factionless global war unlike any before. As war has changed, so has the army, and so will you. None will tell of your successes in these battles, or your failures, or even your deaths. But the battles you face will be the ones you are chosen for, the ones that you alone can do. Maybe, in a way, you are to be pitied. By choosing to accept your recruitment to FOXHOUND, you will become your battles. You will know no life but combat. But this is also my gift to you, this new world of war’s gift to you. You are not tools of this government, or anyone else. You fight for yourselves, for your daemons and your friends and your comrades-in-arms, and to protect the things you hold dear. This is the reality of war, and FOXHOUND was built to be a match for it. Will you join me, then? Can you dedicate your life to this?”

Helene’s hackles were raised, but she was silent, and David and the other recruits shouted as one, “Yes, Big Boss!”

Big Boss smiled, almost softly. “Then welcome to FOXHOUND. It is an honor to serve with you.”

He walked down the steps off the platform and onto the floor, approaching the recruits. Stepping up to the leftmost in line – an Air Force woman, black hair, built like a runner, with her angular coyote daemon sitting primly beside her – Big Boss shook her hand. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Grinning Coyote.”

He moved down the line, shaking each of their hands, and welcoming them, one by one, assigning the code names they would take into this new era of their lives.

A broad Army man with a pug daemon. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Quaint Pug.”

A scrappy-looking Navy woman with a crow daemon. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Radiant Crow.”

The blonde Coast Guard man with a German Shepherd daemon. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Shattered Shepherd.”

Another Army man, this one with a pitbull daemon. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Mountain Pitbull.”

A woman in an unidentifiable uniform with a beautiful Irish Setter daemon. “Welcome to FOXHOUND, Opal Setter.”

And then Big Boss was standing in front of David. He paused, breaking the flow of his introductions, and stared into David’s eyes for a long, uncomfortable moment. Big Boss’s eye was a dark gray-blue, like slate in the rain, like David’s own.

David tensed. Helene sat up straighter.

And then Big Boss blinked, and the strange moment was over. He held out his hand, and David shook it too quickly, wanting to reassert the pattern, move back into the flow. Big Boss nodded. “Welcome to FOXHOUND… Solid Snake.”

 _Wait, what?_ Time froze, for just a second. Helene let out a sharp breath from her nose, but David kept presence of mind enough to nudge her side with his knee and she didn’t growl her surprise and insult. Big Boss’s anaconda daemon dipped her head to Helene in acknowledgement, and Helene nodded back, and Big Boss continued down the line like nothing had happened.

“Welcome to FOXHOUND, East Terrier.”

“Welcome to FOXHOUND, Sorry Iguana.”

“Welcome to FOXHOUND, Support Treefrog.”

“Welcome to FOXHOUND, Downing Shepherd.” (Another recruit with a German Shepherd daemon, this one an Army woman.)

At the end of the line, after each recruits hand had been shaken and each code name assigned, Big Boss stepped back and surveyed them all again. “I expect great things from you. And you should expect great things from yourselves.” And with that, he turned around and walked out the front door of the vehicle hangar. His daemon’s tail writhed languidly against his back as everyone watched him leave.

Once he was gone, the crowd began to disperse, induction over as abruptly as it had begun.

 

* * *

 

**FOXHOUND base, Montana, later**

“Where did that _come_ from?” Helene asked. She was lying down next to David’s new bunk, chewing on her paw absentmindedly. “I’m no _snake_."

David – Snake – paused from unpacking his few things into his new quarters. “Most soldiers have dog daemons. Maybe he ran out of names.”

She gave a light snort. “If there were two Shepherds today, they could spare you a _Solid Wolfdog_ or _Solid Malamute_ or _Solid Dog_ or something.”

He resumed his unpacking. “Why is this bothering you so much?”

“I’m not a _snake_ , and neither are you.” She stopped chewing at her paw, though, and looked up at him. “But, also, because you were the only one. And because Mr. Miller is here. And this has to mean something.”

“Miller?”

“Remember the last time we saw him?”

“Yeah,” David said. “We were… sixteen? It was right after you’d settled.”

She laughed, and wagged her tail in one long, slow, teasing sweep. “I had been settled for _months_. It was right after you finally noticed.”

“Hrmmph.” He put the last of his things in his footlocker and shoved the black duffel bag under the bed, then sat down. The bed was very spare and the mattress was thin but durable. There was a little more personal privacy here than in the barracks where he’d lived for most of the last two years, but in this new place the no-frills military functionality was familiar and almost comforting. “What about Mr. Miller, then?”

“He came to see you. But remember what he said when he saw me?”

David did, actually, now that she brought it up, because it had been so weird. “Yeah. He said, ‘Well, at least she’s not another damn snake.’”

“Exactly. Don’t you think that means something?”

“What, though?”

She tipped her head from side to side, her personal gesture for _who knows?_ “Something.”

David leaned over to pet her and began to scratch behind her ears. “It’s probably some weird FOXHOUND thing,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. We just showed up today. If it’s something we need to know, they’ll tell us.”

She licked his hand. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right.”

 

* * *

 

Kazuhira Miller unlatched his prosthetic arm and dumped it on his bedside table, then flopped down onto his bed, staring up at the concrete ceiling. He couldn’t believe this. He couldn’t _fucking_ believe this.

(He could, in fact, believe this, and that was why he was so angry.)

“Am I overreacting?” he asked, up to the empty ceiling. “It’s not like this wasn’t the whole damn plan all along.” The paint was starting to chip, and there was a water stain in the corner that was definitely bigger than it had been last week. Maybe he should add it to maintenance patrol’s next rotation. He tried to care, to focus on that. He couldn’t.

Mizuki leapt up onto the bed too, and settled down next to him, her legs tucked neatly below her body, her chin resting on his chest. She swished her fluffy tail back and forth, slowly. “Do you want an answer to that?”

Miller sighed. He began to stroke Mizuki’s fur with his good hand, and let the stump of his other arm dangle listlessly off the bed. He was so tired. “That’s his son. I don’t even know if he knows I know. Maybe he thinks he’s being clever. Maybe he’s even forgotten. I wouldn’t put it past him. But I looked up that kid’s file. Joined up at eighteen, Green Beret by nineteen, and now he’s a government-sanctioned baby-faced black ops killer here to do god knows what.”

Mizuki nuzzled him. Her nose was cold against his face. “He’s no child soldier. He’s not much younger than we were when we joined the army.”

“He’s enough younger,” Miller said. “And at least we had the choice. We didn’t have much else, but we had that. I don’t think this kid ever had a choice about anything in his life. And I don’t think he knows it, either.” He scowled. “I thought that British kid in Africa was completely fucked over by the whole situation… but now I’m thinking this one was, too. Maybe worse, because he thinks it’s normal. I don’t know. I don’t know, Mimi. The Boss shouldn’t have let this happen, but by now he’s certainly too far gone to care. He doesn’t listen to me anymore, anyway.”

He was still stroking her fur, aimlessly. Her pointy snout tucked under his chin, her eyes closed. Miller remembered when she’d settled, when he was fourteen – he knew he was An American by then, knew he was destined for much bigger, much better things than his old town and sick mother could offer him. He’d _dreamed_ of them. And he’d been nearly _livid_ when Mizuki had settled as a red fox, like it was a personal insult to him, McDonnell Benedict Miller, that she would choose such a _Japanese_ animal. Of course he knew neither human nor daemon could choose the settled form – whether it was God or magic or psychological resonance that determined a daemon’s settled form, sources differed, but it wasn’t up to choice – but he had been fourteen and stupid and wanted to get out. He had resented Mizuki for reminding him that he wasn’t an ordinary, all-American boy who just happened to be stuck in Japan, that being Japanese was part of who he was in a way he couldn’t ignore.

That was fourteen. Fourteen-year-olds were, without exception, idiots. Now, Mizuki was the only thing he trusted on this bitch of an earth, and feeling her here kept him grounded, helped him calm down.

“Are you going to confront him about it?” she asked. Her eyes were still closed, like she already expected the answer, her tail still swishing gently from side to side.

Miller snorted. “Of course I won’t,” he said, bitterness dripping from each word, the disgust with himself nearly palpable in the air. Forty-six-year-olds could be idiots, too. Everyone was an idiot. “You know I won’t. When have I, ever?”


	3. FOXHOUND Days

**FOXHOUND base, spring 1993**

Gray Fox shifted the cards around in his hand, then smirked and reached for his chips. “I’ll see your five, and raise you another five.” He tossed them into the pile.

“Fuck you,” Snake said. “You’re _definitely_ bluffing this time.”

“And it’s those kind of observations that mean you still owe me twelve dollars from last week.”

“Who the hell ever knows with you?” Concrete Swan said, half annoyed, half admiring. “I fold.”

Fox laughed. Swan rolled her eyes but could help but laugh a little too.

“Well,” Snake said, “I’m matching your ten.”

Fox nodded mock-seriously. “Brave. You’re gonna go far, kid.” His small, sleek fox daemon, Layla, yipped and twitched her ears, and Helene, who was lying next to Snake, wagged her tail and rumbled back.

Weekly FOXHOUND poker night had a rotating cast of whoever felt like losing their spare cash to Fox that night. He usually played and nearly always won, but he always played such an entertaining game that no one ever really minded. (And, Fox had informed him, they’d changed the unofficial rules years ago to low bills only, and half the time no one actually paid up, which helped.)

The six who had shown up tonight were spread out on the floor of the rec building. Gray Fox was lying on his stomach nonchalantly, feet up in the air, a truly unfair pile of chips in front of him; Snake, Swan, Iguana, and two of Fox’s friends that Snake still didn’t know very well sat or lay in a circle, trying (and failing) to outsmart him. It wasn’t the money that was important, it was the bragging rights for the week if you did manage to win the night.

“What the hell,” Sorry Iguana said. “Sure, I call.” He threw in his chips. He was lying on his stomach too, and his iguana daemon dozed on his back.

“Nah,” the skinny man to Iguana’s left, Vampire Bat, said. “I fold.” He put down his cards and picked up his beer to watch the rest of the round.

(Cheap beer was another staple of Poker Night, and Snake got no end of grief for the fact that he wouldn’t turn twenty-one for another two months.)

“C’mon, Bat, you’re better than that,” Fox said. Then he turned to the woman next to him and said, “So, Wolf, it’s all up to you now.”

Her eyes flicked to him. “Mm.”

Sniper Wolf didn’t talk much, or at least, not where Snake was around to hear it. He knew of her more than he really knew her – she was supposed to be incredible, but she spent most of her time with Big Boss and high command. So did Fox, though, and she was his friend, and when she showed up to Poker Night she was the only person who beat him with any regularity. (Swan teasingly said he had a crush on her, but Snake knew for a fact that Swan had a crush on her too, so she was biased – Snake suspected Wolf’s success was based more on the fact that she was the only one who never drank alcohol.)

“If it all depends on me now,” Wolf said, in her quiet accent, “then I’d like to be on equal footing, yes?”

“What --” Fox began, and then turned as Layla yelped indignantly. Sniper Wolf’s daemon, a lanky wolf even bigger than Helene, was holding her by the scruff of her neck.

Wolf put her finger under Fox’s chin and tilted his face up to her. “Now, Fox, using your daemon to look at my cards is _hardly_ fair play.”

“I _wasn’t_ ”, Layla said indignantly, squirming in the wolf daemon’s grip, and Fox’s expression was so _dramatically_ insulted and wounded that even as he laughed Snake suspected that Fox had been trying _some_ shit.

“Of course not,” Wolf said. “But best keep it that way, hmm?” Her daemon dropped Layla and lay down beside her again; Layla jumped back over to Fox and rubbed up against him, trying to play off her grievously, tragically wounded pride.

“And,” Wolf added, “I call.” She dropped her chips neatly into the pile.

Hands were shown. Gray Fox won by high card. There was good-natured groaning as he swept up the chips, and then Bat collected up the cards and began to shuffle them again for the next round.

 

* * *

  

**FOXHOUND base, fall 1993**

“HrrrRPPHHH!” Snake hit the ground so hard he was half winded. He gasped for breath, then pushed himself up to his hands and knees, spitting out sod and grass.

Big Boss stood over him, arms folded – not impatient, yet, but not impressed. “Hrmph. Are you even trying, soldier?”

Still trying to return his his breathing to normal, Solid Snake clambered back up to his feet. He locked eyes with Big Boss, then sank back into CQC stance – knees bent, weight shifted onto his rear foot, back straight, elbows close at his sides. “Yes, _sir_.”

Behind him, pausing anxiously from her restless circling, Helene whined but didn’t come closer to interfere. Big Boss’s daemon, still coiled loosely and draped across his shoulders – Snake never saw her any other way – was implacable, unreadable. She hissed softly. Her dark-veined eyes glittered.

Big Boss nodded, then shifted into a defensive CQC stance as well. “Then again.”

Snake hung back a second too long to make the first move, and in that second Big Boss rushed at him with the fury and power of a tank. Snake dodged left, trying to catch him on his non-cyborg-arm side and use his momentum against him, but Big Boss had either been expecting that or had reflexes _absurd_ for someone pushing sixty, because as Snake moved Big Boss twisted and grabbed his shoulder, yanking him closer. Snake flinched away, instinctively trying to avoid contact with the anaconda daemon, and Big Boss used that moment of distraction to flip Snake off his feet and send him face-planting back into the dirt.

One-on-one CQC training with Big Boss was an honor, of course, but Snake wasn’t sure he was actually learning anything besides severe frustration.

“You’re not committing,” Big Boss rumbled.

Snake let out a hard breath through his teeth. “Committing?”

“You move in for the strike, but you don’t land it. You lunge for a grapple, but don’t grab on. You’re not committing fully to your movements.” Big Boss helped him back up to his feet. “You’ve been in battle. You know that you can’t hesitate, even for a moment. You have to let yourself become fully immersed in the fight, the action. Make your movements. Follow through. And once you’ve decided to make an attack or a defense, _commit_.”

“Then _let_ me, Boss,” Snake said. It sounded whiny, even to him, but he was almost too frustrated to care. Lack of _commitment_ wasn’t his problem. “I can’t use what you’re teaching me if your daemon is in the way the whole time.”

“My _daemon?_ ” Big Boss said, and the anaconda twisted up and raised her head to meet Snake’s eyes, seeming affronted. “Is that your excuse?”

“It’s not an excuse,” Snake said. “But I can’t practice what you’re teaching if I’m not able to grab you, and I can’t while you’re wearing your daemon like that.”

“Why not?” Big Boss asked.

Snake stared. He couldn’t see, but he could feel, Helene freeze. “What?”

“Why not, soldier?” Big Boss demanded. “You should be treating this as a battle simulation.”

“I…” _Why not? Why_ not? _Is this some kind of test?_ “The techniques you’re teaching involve a lot of grappling by the shoulders and upper arms, Boss, and yours are completely covered by your daemon.”

“And?”

 _And?_ What the hell answer was he looking for? Was Big Boss seriously suggesting he expected Snake to grab his _daemon?_ “I’m… not going to _touch_ your _daemon_ , Boss.” This had to be some kind of test.

Big Boss glared at him, and somehow the intensity was magnified by his only one eye. “Do you expect war to be _easy_ on you, Solid Snake?” he asked, and his voice was calm, but dangerous. “You are in FOXHOUND now. Do you expect war to have rules? To be _fair?_ ”

“Boss…” Snake was at a loss for words. What could he _say?_ You didn’t touch another person’s daemon. You just _didn’t_. Even in a fight, even in war, it was the greatest taboo he could think of. It would be a fundamental violation of… of bodily integrity, of personal decency, of basic respect. Just thinking about it made Snake’s skin crawl. He didn’t know how to _voice_ that, though, so he said, “Isn’t manhandling an enemy combatant’s daemon a war crime under the Geneva Conventions?”

Big Boss almost looked thoughtful. Then, “Is torture a war crime, soldier?”

The hell? “Of course it is!”

“Hrghghmmh.” By Big Boss’s tone, Snake honestly couldn’t tell if that question had been rhetorical, or if he actually didn’t know – or didn’t care about – the answer. “But,” Big Boss said, “we always kept Ocelot around, didn’t we?”

There was no “Ocelot” in FOXHOUND that Snake was aware of, so he had absolutely no idea how to respond to this. He gave a noncommittal grunt.

“Fine, then,” Big Boss said. “You still need to learn CQC, but if you want to fight a _clean_ war, Snake, you’ll have to try much harder than that. Again.”

And in a flash of skin and scales, Solid Snake was on the ground again.

 

* * *

  

**New Mexico, summer 1994**

The New Mexico desert was brutally hot. Even under light daypacks, Snake was sweltering; the Southwest was supposed to be a _dry_ heat, but this was brutal. He could tell Helene was suffering under her double coat; but she was a soldier, just as he was, and she was suffering in stubborn silence. They’d lived for a year and a half in Arizona, when they were ten, so he wasn’t unused to the heat, but during that time Helene had mostly taken the form of a coyote, or lizard, or javelina, or a long-legged light-furred dog, something that belonged there. Not a wolf-Malamute. And, for most of the year, even 90-degree heat was bearable, because the dry air meant that the heat somehow never really reached the body; but this was monsoon season. It had poured for twenty minutes that morning, and everyone had been grateful for the respite, but now the humidity in the air was just enough to be noticeable and make the heat oppressive.

Hellmaster Miller lived up to his name.

He wasn’t even trekking with the dozen soldiers on his survival training this time; he had a _jeep_ , and he was making full use of it. In the back of the jeep were several extra gallons of water and basic first aid supplies (“You’ll be carrying your own, but _ideally_ even if you fuck something up you won’t die.”), and Gray Fox. Fox was _supposed_ to be hiking with them, but he’d gotten bored, or _something_ , because he and Layla were reclining in the back of Miller’s jeep now with the spare water. “You _fucker,_ ” Snake had shouted, when he saw him like that. Fox saluted but didn’t move.

It didn’t matter. Because after four hours of hiking across the desert, starting at sunrise, the dusty jeep pulled up to another, equally empty section of desert, but this one surrounded by a high barbed-wire perimeter fence, and slowed to a stop.

Snake and the other soldiers stopped too, partly relieved and partly suspicious. Gray Fox now slid out of the jeep, Layla hopping down beside him. He grabbed a keycard from the back and walked over to the gate in the fence in silence. Everyone watched, in equal silence, and he scanned the keycard and the gate swung open.

Miller got out of the car now, too. Out here, his limp didn’t seem so bad; he almost seemed rejuvenated by the harsh, empty landscape. Mimi leapt down, prowling behind him; Layla scampered over to bother her, but Mimi, the bigger fox, snapped at her, and Layla pranced away again, snickering. Miller glared at Fox. Fox shrugged, innocently.

“Soldiers,” Master Miller said, and everyone straightened up and stood at attention, their daemons standing alert beside them or sitting properly on their shoulders. Everyone in the group was a relatively recent recruit to FOXHOUND, two to three years, but all of them had been in the army for a long time and knew that something serious was coming. “Everyone know where we are?”

Of course they did. The Hellmaster would never tolerate anyone so unprepared they didn’t bother to learn where in the wilderness they were setting out to. “The Trinity site, Master Miller” and “the Trinity test site, Master Miller” came in a sharp chorus.

“Good,” Miller said. “And does anyone know why it’s fenced off? Coyote?”

“Because the radiation left over from the nuclear bomb test is dangerous, Master Miller,” Grinning Coyote responded. She must have been from the region; she had barely broken a sweat during the hike, and her coyote daemon was as alert and energetic as ever.

“Good,” Master Miller said, “you’ve heard the official line that the government puts out to keep citizens away. It’s not true. Snake, do you know the reason?”

 _Radition_ was the answer Snake had been prepared to give. If it wasn’t the radiation, then why? “National security, Master Miller,” Snake said, keeping the question out of his voice.

“What, do you think that America’s enemies or any homegrown terrorists could build a bomb just by looking at the blasted aftermath of one?” Miller asked. “Decent guess. No. Treefrog?”

Support Treefrog was clearly near-collapse, his frog daemon in almost worrying danger out here in the desert. “Historical importance?” he hazarded. “Master Miller.”

Miller snorted. “No.”

“You know, I keep wondering,” Fox said, “what would you do if anyone ever _did_ know the answer?”

“Shoot them as a spy, most likely,” said Miller. “There’s a reason this is kept under wraps. Well, _was_.” His scowl indicated that he knew exactly how the information had leaked, but it wasn’t Snake’s place to ask, so he didn’t.

“Then what is the answer, Master Miller?” Coyote asked. She’d always been bold, and rarely been patient.

Rather than admonish her, Miller gestured at the open gate. “Why don’t you see for yourselves? Ground zero is a kilometer in. There’s a memorial marker there.” When several people exchanged uncomfortable glances, Miller added, “It’s _one click_ in. The radiation isn’t enough to seriously hurt you if you don’t _dawdle_. Are you soldiers or not?”

“Come on,” Fox said, and he walked through the gate. The rest of the group, after another collective moment of hesitation, followed.

On the other side of the fence, Snake expected to feel a tingle of radiation, or the weight of death and destruction, or… something. But the desert inside the fence was about the same as outside. Scraggly scrub, yellow-brown rock and dust. As he walked, he didn’t see anything to indicate that this was the birthplace of death, destroyer of worlds.

“It’s been nearly fifty years,” Fox said, falling in step beside Snake. Whether he sensed the question, or was trying to reassure him, or just wanted to break the uncomfortable silence, Snake didn’t know. “The radiation levels now are only about ten times higher than normal background radiation for the area. That’s not what you should be worrying about.”

That phrasing was not reassuring.

“Fox – “ Snake began to say, turning to him, but he stopped short. Something _was_ odd. Something was wrong. He couldn’t tell what it was, until he heard Iguana shout somewhere to his left. Iguana’s daemon was hissing in obvious distress, and then as Snake watched, she jumped down from Iguana’s shoulder and ran back towards the fence. Snake didn’t know anything about reptile body language, but she clearly wasn’t happy.

Iguana’s daemon –

Somewhere to Snake’s right, he could hear a coyote yipping in pain.

And Helene wasn’t beside him. Helene wasn’t behind him. That was what he was feeling, that was what was wrong.

He jerked around, and Helene was standing, still and anxious, several yards behind him. Her tail was down, her hackles were up, and her ears were pressed flat against her head.

“Helene?”

“David,” she said, and her voice was thin and tense, “what _is_ this place?”

They both knew the obvious answer, of course, but something not obvious was clearly deeply wrong.

“Helene,” Snake said, keeping his voice calm, “get over here.”

The look in her eyes was now anxious _and_ hurt. “Don’t you think I’m _trying?_ ” she snapped. She backed up, darted left, sprang forward, fell back, ran back and forth in a burst of anxious energy along an invisible line in the sand. “I can’t,” she said, and she sounded afraid now, her voice rising into a wail, “What is this place? I _can’t!_ ” Layla, who was also staying carefully behind the invisible barrier, slunk nonthreateningly towards Helene, tried to press close to comfort her and calm her down. Helene snarled and darted away again. She didn’t want to be comforted, didn’t want to be calm.

Sounds of distress from human and daemon were rising all along the perimeter now. Snake spun to stare at Fox, who alone looked unaffected. “What’s going _on?_ ” Fox shrugged, and Snake yelled, “Don’t give me that! What’s going _on?_ ”

“Rules are rules,” Fox said. “Keep walking. At the center, you’ll see.”

“Bullshit! We can’t go any farther than – ”

 _”You_ can.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“Keep walking, soldier,” said Gray Fox, a hard edge in his voice. “Unless you want to go back and explain to Hellmaster Miller why you failed.”

Snake’s hands balled into fists. What the _fuck?_ He shot another look back at Helene. She was pacing, circling, unable to sit still but unable to move forward, either. He could feel the distance between them pulling at him now, and it promised to get painful if he moved any farther away.

 _Why?_ he wanted to ask, but couldn’t – of course he couldn’t. For a moment, he considered it, considered leaving whatever curse was on this place and running back to Helene – but of course he couldn’t do that, either. Of course he wouldn’t. He was a soldier.

But the look he gave Fox must have belied more helplessness than he intended, because Fox said, more gently, “If you can’t take orders – even when you don’t understand them, even when they seem wrong – you’re not going to last very long here, Snake.”

He knew that. Of course he knew that. That was what made this so hard.

Snake let out a long, slow breath through his nose. He nodded, curtly. Fox nodded back. Then Fox walked off to check on the others, and Snake was left alone.

And he walked without looking back again.

Not when the distance between them grew painful, like a taut rope pulling on his insides, trying to drag him back. Not when his muscles trembled and his breathing grew ragged and his lungs burned. Not when Helene began to howl her confusion and pain, and all the other canine daemons took up the cry, howling to the sun like their hearts were breaking all at once. And not when the _pulling_ receded to a dull, aching emptiness more profound than Snake thought was possible, an aloneness he had never felt before in his life. He kept trudging forward, focusing on keeping his breathing steady, keeping his eyes on the ground right ahead of him.

The walk seemed to take days, but it was probably only twenty minutes – still _absurdly_ long to walk a single kilometer – when Snake reached the marker at ground zero.

The ground was no longer sand and rock, but broken-up rough greenish glass. Grinning Coyote was there, bent nearly double with her hands on her knees, her whole body shaking; Clip Borzoi, a recruit from the year earlier, stumbled in at the same time as Snake did and sat on the ground looking dazed and distant. No one else was there. The air smelled like vomit. Neither of their daemons were in sight.

The marker was a ten-foot-tall cement block, slightly tapered, with a plaque at the bottom. With no other idea of what he was supposed to do here, Snake walked up to read it.

TRINITY SITE  
where  
the world’s first  
nuclear device  
was exploded on  
July 16, 1945  
and which has been  
cursed by death  
ever since

“Do you know what the fuck is going on here?” Snake asked, barely above a whisper. It felt wrong to speak too loud, in this place.

Coyote looked up and shook her head.

“It’s got to be the radiation,” Borzoi said. “Or something. Something like that. Ghosts, maybe. Daemons can’t come in here. I don’t know why we can. I don’t know how that’s possible.”

Over the next half hour, nine of the others made their way to the center. None of them had their daemons. Some were trembling, a few looked like they were fighting back tears. Most were breathing hard and ragged. All looked like they’d trekked through a war zone. Following up the with the last of them was Gray Fox, who alone seemed serene and collected. He scanned the haggard group, then said, “So, I think you’ve all noticed why no one is allowed in here.”

“Why would anyone _want_ to come in here?” Snake snapped. “What was the point of this?”

“This is torture,” Sorry Iguana said. He’d been a straggler. “Whatever the fuck else this is about, separation of a person from their daemon is actually torture and actually illegal.”

“Out of line, soldier,” Fox said. “ _Forcible_ separation is torture. You had the option to turn back. Three of you did. The rest of you have gained something invaluable to operations going forward.”

“That’s hardly fair – “ Coyote began.

“Of course it’s not,” Fox said. “When you joined FOXHOUND, did you expect it to be?”

Coyote straightened up and might, against all better judgement, been about to slug Fox when he said, “This happens every year. You’re all holding up better than many. When you get back, trust me, it’s going to be worth it. And it _is_ time to go back – you don’t have to stand around here any longer.” He smiled wryly. “Don’t want to keep the Hellmaster waiting, after all.”

 

* * *

 

The walk back took a fraction of the time. The eleven of them marched briskly, self-controlled, wanting to run, to sprint those thousand meters back without stopping – but held back. They were good soldiers all, who had proven starkly that their orders and their trust of their superior officers meant more than self-preservation or natural instincts of right and wrong. Maybe this was what the whole exercise was meant to prove, Snake thought. He wasn’t sure how much he liked that, but he was a good soldier, and willed himself to not care. Now he just wanted to get back.

For the last fifty meters or so, though, once the dark smudges in the distance had resolved themselves clearly into the shapes of stressed-out dogs and birds and lizards and sundry, self-control collapsed to the desire to be whole again. Borzoi was the first to give in and break into a sprint, and within seconds the rest of them took that as permission to follow suit, and Snake found himself running like his life depended on it, covering those last fifty meters faster than he ever had before in his life.

He barely had time to register Master Miller, leaning against the fence and watching the whole ordeal, before he spotted Helene, and then he wasn’t able to care about anything else. He ran to her and she jumped up at him and they collided, he wrapped his arms around her and she shoved her paws against his chest, he dug his fingers into her fur and she licked his face, tail wagging furiously, like she’d been afraid she would never see him again. (She probably had. _He_ had.)

“Where _were_ you?” she asked, overjoyed, accusing. “What _was_ that? I couldn’t feel you at _all._ You were _gone_. You were just – you were _gone_.”

“Yeah,” Snake said, “I don’t know either. But I’m back now.”

A dozen reunions, a dozen breakdowns of emotion that under other circumstances everyone involved would have been embarrassed to show in front of the others, let alone in front of Miller. (Quietly, unnoticed, even Gray Fox knelt down and Layla jumped, relieved, into his arms, and he pressed her to his chest.)

On the hike back to their base camp, nobody talked about it. No one discussed what happened, no one treated the three who hadn’t made it any differently than they had that morning. All their daemons stuck close to their sides, though, and everyone knew that something, fundamentally, had changed.

 

* * *

 

 

**FOXHOUND base, four days later**

Snake still could barely believe it. It was the sort of thing, if Fox had told him a week ago, he’d write off as fake. But he’d seen it. He’d _felt_ it. Master Miller hadn’t been able to offer any real explanations, except that they’d had scientists working on it for decades and the best they could come up with was “radiation, probably.” Maybe that was a lie, maybe he was still hiding something. Snake didn’t know. FOXHOUND was hiding a lot.

But Fox hadn’t lied when he’d told them they’d gained something invaluable.

“Helene,” Snake said, “ready?”

She rumbled her assent and pawed the ground. David crouched, and let the frisbee fly.

It sailed down the drill field seventy, eighty, ninety yards, and Helene went tearing after it.

“It’s almost ignoble,” Fox said.

“It’s relaxing,” Snake rejoined. “Have you never played frisbee?”

“Must never have gotten around to it.”

Nearly a hundred yards away, Helene galloped in a wide arc, the yellow frisbee in her jaws.

“I’m still not happy that you didn’t think to warn me at all,” Snake said.

“Take it up with Master Miller,” Fox replied. “They’re his rules. If it were up to me, I would have, but I don’t have the authority to override the Hellmaster.” Fox punched Snake in the shoulder, lightly. “Besides, would you even have believed me if I told you?”

Snake shoved him back, but he was grinning, just a little. “No, but that’s just because you in particular are so full of bullshit.”

“Your loss,” Fox said. “I guess you won’t be invited to the orgies where we all dance naked with the Devil.”

“Yeah, I’ll pass.”

“Again, your loss. Big Boss is a fantastic dancer.”

 _”Fox!_ ” Snake said, and shoved him again. “What kind of mental image is _that?_ ”

Fox was laughing outright now. “What, if separation training didn’t mentally scar you, I’d hardly think that the innocent image of Big Boss majestic in the moonlight – ”

“Fuck you, actually,” Snake said, but he was trying not to laugh now, too. “No wonder FOXHOUND command keeps so many secrets. You all would get burned as witches if anyone knew.”

It was a joke, but it did make Snake wonder what _else_ FOXHOUND command was keeping from them all. A week ago, he had thought that being able to separate from your daemon for long distances was a myth. It was right up there with self-transformation, third nipples, brewing magic potions, and, well, naked-orgy-Devil-dancing, that people got accused as witches for back in like the 1600s, but nobody actually believed in now because they were so patently fake. He was… _pretty_ sure witches didn’t actually exist, or like, ghosts and vampires and shit, but daemon separation was real, so who the hell knew?

“Is everyone in FOXHOUND like this?” Snake asked.

“Can separate from their daemons?” Fox asked. “Yes. Once Miller thinks they can handle it, and Big Boss thinks they’re ready to be assigned missions. Being able to get a kilometer away from your daemon makes infiltration and espionage _so_ much easier than having to be within a half-dozen yards at all times.”

“I can imagine,” Snake said. Helene trotted back up to him now, tail wagging, frisbee in her mouth, and Snake took it and threw it again. She took off after it. He watched her go. “It still feels… wrong.”

“It never feels _good_ to be away from your daemon,” Fox said. “Especially not at Trinity. That place… that place has a powerful aura.” Then, as they watched Helene run, “I don’t think it’s radiation that does it, you know.”

“Huh?”

“The official word is that it’s radiation. But I think Oppenheimer got it right.”

“Oppenheimer?”

“You know. ‘I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.’” Fox looked at Snake, suddenly serious. “I think it’s the specter of death, there. The unleashing of nuclear power into the world. Daemons are life, they’re souls, they’re something fundamental and sacred. And I don’t think they can coexist with the horror that was planted there.”

Helene returned with the frisbee again, and instead of throwing it once more, Snake rubbed behind her ears. Glad that they were together. Glad that the cold war was over. He’d never thought that those would be things he’d have to worry about together.

Fox sighed. “But, who knows. There are people who can separate from their daemons naturally, and they seem fine and definitely not dead.”

“What? I didn’t think that was real.”

“It happens,” Fox said. “Rarely, but it happens. Back in the 70s, I knew a scary albino lesbian scientist whose daemon was a crow, or a blackbird. Her daemon could leave and fly away as far as she wanted, and when she came back it was as if nothing unusual had happened. It was eerie, the first time I – “

“Wait,” Snake said, “she?”

“Her daemon was female, too. She was a strange woman. They say she put a ghost in a computer. Honestly, if anyone was a modern witch who could separate from their daemon, she’d be my first guess. She was absolutely brilliant, and slightly terrifying.” That was rare, high praise, from Fox. “The point is, it can and does happen, occasionally. FOXHOUND just… found a way to manufacture the process on a large scale.”

Snake wasn’t sure he believed the first part – Fox was full of stories like that, they couldn’t possibly all be true – but he couldn’t exactly disagree with Fox’s conclusion.

He stroked Helene’s back. She wagged her tail. Even several days later, it was a comforting relief to have her here, to be in contact, to know she was close to him. “Does it change anything?” Snake asked.

“No,” Fox said, “I don’t think so. Or if it has, I’ve gotten so used to it I don’t even remember.” Layla was a few yards away, at a distance Snake would have thought would start to be painful if he hadn’t known. She was pouncing on leaves that were blowing and skittering in the wind, uninterested in their conversation.

 

* * *

  

**FOXHOUND base, 1995**

“Spread the word,” Gray Fox said, “or not, everyone will find out soon enough, but I won’t make poker night tomorrow.”

“Shipping out?” Snake asked. Fox only missed poker night when he was away on training, which was rare, or on a mission, which was relatively frequent.

“Yeah.”

“How long?”

“Impossible to say. Probably not too long, though.”

“What kind of mission is it?”

Fox clicked his tongue and shook his head in exaggerated disapproval. “Now, Dave, you know that’s _classified_.”

“You don’t even know where you’re going or what you’re doing, do you?” Snake said, goading him.

He laughed. “Trying to play off my pride, are you? Smart move. It’ll work every time.” He didn’t continue, though, and instead stopped walking, staring off across the field at their daemons. Layla had darted under Helene’s legs and nipped playfully at her heels; Helene gave a huffy growl, a lighthearted response that meant she was playing too but playing to _win_ , and wheeled around to snap her jaws at Layla’s tail. Layla sprinted away, and bounded through the wide drill field, Helene cantering after her. It was still only mid-autumn, but it had been a cool summer and winter was promising to come early. The frost on the yellowing grass had only partially melted, and as Layla pranced and leapt she left crisp, clear footprints that Helene’s fiercer running (and larger paws) deliberately churned up and destroyed. It was a game, the kind of game Layla was always playing and Frank was always enabling, but Snake had known him long enough to recognize when Layla was being _aggressively_ whimsical, and Gray Fox himself too carefully nonchalant. He was either planning something, or worried about something, and neither was good.

“Frank?” Snake prompted.

“Hm?” Fox snapped out of his thoughts. “Oh, right. It can’t hurt. It’s an independent terrorist state in Africa that FOXHOUND has been monitoring for a while now, but Big Boss wouldn’t let us send anyone into for months. It was Miller who finally overrode that, and the boss named me to go, but he still isn’t happy to have anyone going at all. Neither is the Hellmaster, honestly. Whatever’s happening here, I don’t like it.”

Snake shrugged. “They’ve never been on very good terms.”

“They used to be.”

Snake didn’t have anything to say to that, and Fox didn’t elaborate.

“Well,” Snake said, after a pause, “you’re the best FOXHOUND has. Whatever’s in there, you can handle it. Anything that wants to kill you has to be smarter and tougher than you first, and we both know that isn’t possible.”

Fox laughed at that. He draped his arm around Snake’s shoulder, and leaned up to plant a quick kiss above Snake’s eyebrow. “I don’t know, Dave,” he said, “you’re going to give me a run for my money someday.”

He couldn’t help but smile. “You can count on that.”

Fox pressed his forehead into Snake’s hair, above his ear. He was comfortably warm on this chilly autumn day. (Distantly, Snake was aware that Helene had finally caught Layla, that Layla was lying in the grass with her belly up and giving a high, pleased whine from the back of her throat. Everything was fine. Everything would be fine.)

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Fox said.

 

* * *

 

Things never go as planned. And things never go easily. This wasn’t new information to Snake, but it’s never easy to hear, or easy to bear.


	4. Aftermath, Round One

**FOXHOUND base, late fall, 1995**

They didn’t talk about it. Not to each other, at least. No one else would talk about anything else. The whole unit was in an uproar, the Pentagon calling in round-the-clock, the CIA sending operatives to lock down the base, Colonel Campbell bringing them each in individually to “ask a few questions” that lasted all day. His ermine daemon paced the floor of the interrogation room anxiously, unable to sit still, and as Snake sat in the flat-lit room it was the most distracting thing possible to look at while repeating, over and over, everything that had gone down in Outer Heaven, everything Big Boss had done and said to him. Everyone at the base was on edge, and Snake didn’t want to talk to any of them. Sorry Iguana wouldn’t stop pestering Snake with questions; Grinning Coyote kept stealing furtive glances at him, clearly bursting with curiosity but trying to figure out how to get her answers tactfully; Concrete Swan only ever looked at him with worried, sad eyes, like she was afraid he would fall apart at any second. Two days after he got back, Vampire Bat dropped by his quarters with a half-pound block of dark chocolate wrapped in foil. “Cost me a bitch and a half to get this out here,” he said, “but if Fox is telling the truth, you need it way more than I do.”

But for every face full of shocked curiosity or cloying pity, there was another full of disgust, rage, or suspicion. Written Rhinoceros, a high-ranking older member whose daemon prevented him from going on stealth missions but who was an undisputed genius of mission control and logistics, confronted Snake outright, spat at his feet, and said that if Snake hadn’t been such a fucking bootlicker, hadn’t been Big Boss’s _pet_ , none of this would have happened. Snake would have fought him right then and there, thrown Rhino to the ground and beaten him into the dust and just _dared_ his massive, powerful daemon to do something about it, but before he had the chance Fox materialized almost out of nowhere behind him. “Rhino. We don’t need this right now, and you damn well know it. Stand down, soldier.” Fox’s voice was full of seething, carefully-controlled rage Snake had never heard before. Even Rhino seemed taken aback, but recovered quickly, and scowled at Fox. “Don’t think you’re any better, Gray Fox. We all know that you – ”

“Rhino,” Fox said, and his voice was quiet, like ice sharp enough to cut to the bone. “If you are still standing here in ten seconds, I will kill you.”

Rhino still looked ready to fight, but he shut up and glared at Fox sullenly. Fox met his eyes and held them, unblinking. Then, with one final glare at Snake, Rhino turned on his heel and stalked away, his daemon following and making a deliberate motion to step as forcefully as possible, rumbling the earth with her threat.

After Rhino receded, but before Fox could say anything else, Snake snapped, “I didn’t need your help.” He turned around and left, too. Fox didn’t try to stop him.

 

* * *

 

Five days after he and Fox got back, Master Miller walked up to him in the firing range. It was early evening; Snake had spent the whole day there. In the farthest-back booth, with the earplugs and noise-cancelling earmuffs, staring down at the unmoving circular target, it was the most secluded he could get, and almost therapeutic, in a way. At least, it gave him something to do with his hands, something rote and specific to focus his mind on. Something that let him go through familiar motions and not have to think or reflect. Helene hated the firing range, and she was skulking outside. What she was doing to occupy herself, Snake didn’t know, and, at the moment, didn’t care. This was the first time in more than a year since separation training he was almost relieved to be able to get so far apart.

But he noticed Master Miller out of the corner of his eye, breaking his concentration for the first time in hours. He lowered his gun, slowly, and watched Miller approach, Mimi trailing a dozen paces behind him, her head down in – resentment? reluctance? embarrassment?

Snake clicked the safety on, slid his earmuffs off, and took out one earplug. “Master Miller?”

“Snake,” Miller said. He looked so tired. Snake had seen him at a distance, days earlier, and he’d been livid; but now there was nothing left except tired.

Silence. Snake didn’t think Miller was meeting his eyes, but with the shades, it was hard to tell. Then, Miller cleared his throat, and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Huh?” Master Miller had never apologized (or sympathized) for anything, to anyone, in Snake’s knowledge. This was bizarre, but the entire world had turned upside-down a few days ago, so who even knew what could be real anymore?

Miller sighed. “I – ” He was clearly at a loss for words, so after a few moments of struggling for them, he gave up and just repeated, “I’m sorry.”

Snake paused, and after a second when it was clear that nothing else was immediately forthcoming, he said, “Thank you, Master.”

“Dammit,” Miller said, hissing a frustrated breath through his teeth. “This shouldn’t have happened. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. None of us shou- that’s a lie. You shouldn’t have to deal with this. But you’re tough, Snake, and you can pull through this. Shit’s happened before, and shit will happen again, and those of us who’ve survived have survived, and I know you’re a survivor.”

This was the closest thing to genuine, personal emotion Snake had ever seen from Master Miller, and it was – it was unnerving, actually. Big Boss tried to kill him, Miller was trying to offer emotional support, nothing was right and everything was wrong and Snake just wanted to be somewhere quiet and alone.

“Thank you, Master,” Snake said again, not sure what else to say.

“Right,” Miller said. “Yeah. You want to be alone. You deserve to be. But Campbell’s going to call you back in once the Pentagon sends its people in the next day or two, so, be ready for that.”

“I will, Master Miller.” Snake wasn’t trying to be dismissive, but he just didn’t know what to say.

As Miller was walking away, far enough that he must have thought Snake had his earplugs back in, he asked, “Mimi… _was_ there anything I could have done?”

Snake clapped his earmuffs back on and turned his attention away so he couldn’t overhear her answer.

 

* * *

 

Six days after returning from Outer Heaven, Snake found Fox at the base’s kennels, just… petting the dogs. Fox had always liked the dogs, and over the years Snake had seen him here often (he, too, spent his free time here fairly often; that was how they’d started talking in the first place).

Snake settled down next to Fox, petting the German Shepherd currently basking in Fox’s attention. Joey – he’d always been a good tracker, but too friendly and not well-trained. He wagged his tail when Snake started rubbing behind his ears, and two more dogs (Benny and Alice) wandered over to see what the excitement was about. Helene growled at them, not threatening, but letting them know who was in charge of this makeshift pack; the dogs glanced at her, briefly whined their deference, and then ignored her again. They recognized, instinctively, that she was not a dog like them, and also that she wouldn’t pet them and scratch under their chins and give them treats. She might be fun to run and play with in another situation, but right now they wanted belly rubs.

“Sick of being under the microscope yet?” Fox asked.

Snake grunted. “I was sick of it from day one.”

“Mm.” Fox switched his attention from Joey to Benny, ruffling his fur and running his hand down his back to his tail.

Helene padded over to Layla and tried to nuzzle her. Layla turned around and flicked Helene’s nose with the tip of her tail. Dismissive, or at least, _not now_.

“I’m thinking of retiring,” Snake said. He hadn’t told anyone, but he’d been thinking of it ever since the helicopter picked him up from Outer Heaven.

He expected Fox to tease him. _23 and happily retired? Ooh la la, the army life is a fancy one._ Instead, keeping his eyes on Benny, Fox said, “Good. You should.”

“That’s it?” Snake asked.

Fox didn’t stop petting Benny, but he looked up and met Snake’s eyes now. Fox’s eyes were dark – they had always been dark, of course, but there was a depth in them now that Snake wasn’t used to seeing, and he realized that he had no idea how old Fox was. He’d alluded to his time as a mercenary in the 70s (Christ, Snake had been _born_ in the 70s), but Snake had never thought to wonder until now, because when he met Fox’s eyes, for the first time, they seemed old.

“Dave,” Fox said, and he just sounded weary. Not even tired, like Master Miller had been tired, but a kind of deep resignation that scared Snake for a reason he couldn’t quite place. “If you can still get out, then get out. Get as far away from here as you can. For yourself. For me. Get out while you can.”

“Frank…” Snake said, but Fox stood up, and Layla shook the dew off her fur. Fox put a hand on Snake’s shoulder, leaned over, and kissed him, gently, on the forehead. Then he pulled away.

“Take care of yourself, Dave.”

He left, and didn’t look back. (Layla looked back. But she still left.)

 

* * *

 

A week after returning from Outer Heaven, Gray Fox went AWOL. That was the day the agents of the Pentagon came. Two nearly indistinguishable men – one with a yellowjacket daemon, the other with a pronghorn – went to Colonel Campbell’s office, talked with him briefly, and then went to summon Gray Fox to ask him the same questions everyone else had asked a dozen times now. They couldn’t find him.

An APB was put out that night when he still failed to appear anywhere on the base. By that time, the rumor was that his quarters had been cleared out the night before, meaning he was long gone. Everyone in the unit was asked, in an informal harried rush: when did you last see him? Did he say anything about what his plans were? Do you know when he left? Do you know where he went? Do you know _anything?_

Campbell, trying to prove he could live up to Big Boss (he couldn’t, Snake and everyone else could see that) tried to keep the unit organized, set up a search party, stationed guards at the entrance to Fox’s quarters, tried to look like he was doing _something_. The existence of FOXHOUND and the events in Outer Heaven were now public knowledge, and journalists were starting to show up on the base too, asking _questions_ , waving _video cameras_. Campbell tried to keep them off the base as best he could, but on top of everything else, it was too much manpower to spend when the unit was already in such disarray. A dove daemon with a small camera attached to its leg was nearly shot down before anyone realized that it belonged to a reporter. American civilian casualties would be a _terrible_ look right now.

At least the confusion hadn’t reached Snake yet. He ducked his head and said his name was Spongy Wolfdog if any reporter asked, and stayed in the shooting range or the kennels whenever possible.

But he wanted to see Fox’s quarters, prove to himself that Fox had really just… left.

It wasn’t hard. Snake struck up a conversation with the two frustrated and bored guards outside Fox’s room, and they didn’t even notice Helene slink inside, or back out two minutes later.

“It’s not even cleaned out,” Helene told him, once they were out of earshot. She walked alongside him, ears pricked, listening for anyone coming. “Most of his clothes are still there, and a lot of his gear. His nightstand still had paper and pens, all of those things. His locker, his soap and toothbrush, those were all still there. What’s missing is anything personal. Pictures, letters, papers, that old copy of _Slaughterhouse-Five_ he refuses to replace. The photo of him and his sister that was on his nightstand. Those things are gone.”

“Huh,” Snake said, in a low voice. “So he left in a hurry, and didn’t want anyone knowing where he was going.”

“That’s what it looks like.”

“Why?” _And why wouldn’t he say anything? Why wouldn’t he tell me?_

Helene tipped her head side to side. “David, did we ever really know why he did anything?”

That hurt. But it was true.

Snake looked out toward the mountains. Fox was out there, somewhere, doing God-knew-what. He muttered, more to himself than to Helene, “Take care of yourself, Frank.”

 

* * *

 

Two weeks after returning from Outer Heaven, Solid Snake turned in his resignation to Acting Commander Campbell.

 

* * *

 

“Campbell’s letting you go, then?” Helene asked.

Snake was methodically packing up his sparse quarters. He didn’t have much, which was good. It meant he could move out this evening. He planned to. “Yeah.”

Helene nosed through Snake’s black duffel bag, which was slowly filling up with everything he owned. “Where are we going to go?”

He paused from folding up his civilian clothes. _Where are we going to go?_ He had been avoiding thinking about that. He had been avoiding thinking as much as possible. Folding clothes, packing his effects, sorting his personal belongings from FOXHOUND-issued gear to return, those didn’t require thinking. But it was a question that they would have to face, sooner or later. _Where are we going to go?_

He didn’t have anywhere. He didn’t belong anywhere, not really. He had been shuffled around from foster family to foster family his whole childhood, and joined up with the army when he was 18. Here at the FOXHOUND base was the place he’d lived longest in one unbroken stretch. When he was young, he’d thought that was normal, thought that “living in one place” and “having long-term friends” was a thing invented for TV sitcoms, as unreal as the rest of the farcical shenanigans exaggerated for entertainment. (Maybe that was sad. That was probably sad. Snake didn’t really have any point of reference.)

But it meant that he didn’t have any roots anywhere, nobody to return to, nowhere to go. And he couldn’t stay here. He just… he couldn’t.

Maybe this was what Fox meant, _get out while you can_.

Snake placed a folded pair of jeans on top of a thin pile of clothes to keep. “I don’t know, Helene.”

She walked over to him, and pressed her head against his leg in sympathy. “We could go up to the Yukon. You liked the Yukon.”

A bittersweet pang at the memory of Hellmaster Miller’s Six-Week Alaskan Wilderness Survival Training Course. _“You_ liked the Yukon.”

“I _loved_ the Yukon,” Helene said. “And so did you.”

It was true. Snake had always felt most at peace in the snow and the dark, in silence and stillness and solitude.

He remembered, once, when he was… fifteen? Sophomore year of high school, the year he’d lived in upstate New York, the one year he went to public school with other kids instead of being homeschooled. It had been January, a snow day, and he had just had a fight with his foster family who had informed him that he was being moved, again. He had stormed off into the snow, up the hill covered with bare trees, Helene following after him as a stocky cold-weather dog (in his memory, she hadn’t settled yet, but looking back she probably had, at that point). At the top of the hill he’d flopped, furious and ineffectual, into the foot-deep snow, staring up into the snowflakes gently falling on his face. On that silent afternoon, he could sink into nothingness, could imagine that the only things that existed in the world were himself and Helene and the white snow and the gray sky. He’s stayed there for _hours_ before a rescue team found him, afraid he was dead.

Besides, out of all the kinds of dogs in the world, there was probably a reason Helene was an Alaskan Malamute.

“Yeah,” Snake said, as he finished packing and slung the duffel bag over his shoulder. They had to go somewhere. “Let’s go to the Yukon.”


End file.
